Privacy Policy

Welcome to our Privacy Policy page! When you use our services, you trust us with your information. This privacy policy is here to help you understand what data we collect, why we collect it, and what we do with it. When you share information with us, we can improve our services for you. For instance, we can show you more relevant search results, ads, and help you connect with people or to make sharing with others quicker and easier.

How We Use Information We Collect

We collect information to provide better services to all our users – from figuring out basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like the name that you provide and email. The information we collect includes:

• Information you give us. For example, our services require you to sign up for an account. When you do, we’ll ask for personal information, like your name, email address.
• Information we get from your use of our services. We collect information about the services that you use and how you use them, like when you visit a website, use an application.

We use the information we collect from all our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect our company and our users.

Password encryption

When we talk about one-way encryption in the context of passwords, we're typically referring to a process called hashing. Here’s a clear breakdown:

Password Hashing: When you create a password, it’s transformed into a fixed-length string of characters, known as a hash, using a hashing algorithm. This process is one-way, meaning you can’t reverse-engineer the hash to get the original password back. For example, the password "mypassword" might become something like "5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99".

Storing the Hash: Instead of storing the actual password, the system stores this hashed version. This way, even if someone gains access to the stored data, they won’t see your actual password, only the hash.

Password Verification: When you log in, the system takes the password you entered and runs it through the same hashing algorithm. It then compares the resulting hash with the one stored in the database. If they match, it means the passwords are the same and you’re granted access.

Security Advantage: Because the hashing process is one-way, even if someone steals the hashed passwords, they can’t easily convert them back to the original passwords.

To visualize it:

• Your password (original): mypassword
• Hashing process: [HASHING ALGORITHM]
• Stored hash: 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99
• Password entry at login: mypassword
• Hashing again: [HASHING ALGORITHM]
• Comparison: 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99 == 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99
• Hence, the entered password must be hashed first, and then this hash is matched with the stored hash to verify it.

Transparency and Choice

People have different privacy concerns. Our goal is to be clear about what information we collect, so that you can make meaningful choices about how it is used. For example, you can:

• Review and update your activity controls to decide what kinds of data you’d like saved with your account when you use our services.
• Review and control certain types of information tied to your account.
• Adjust how the Profile associated with your account appears to others.